Practitioners Institute

Though the number of children and adults served by the Children's Zone is ambitious, those numbers are dwarfed by the millions of children, particularly those of color, who are being lost to the chronic poverty of America's inner cities.

The statistics are as frightening as they are sad.
  • In 2006, 13 million children were poor, an increase of more than 10 percent since 2000.
  • Two of every four black babies are born into poverty.
  • Only 50 percent of black students and 53 percent of Latino students graduate on-time with a regular diploma.
  • By their mid-thirties, six in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had been in prison.
  • In 2007, the 50 states spent $44 billion on corrections.

HCZ feels our comprehensive approach to educating children and strengthening families can be successful in other communities as well as Harlem, so we have created the Practitioners Institute, which shares information about our work with others.

The goal is to help communities so they can identify their resources and needs, then organize a coordinated, interdisciplinary strategy.

For a reasonable fee, a community delegation can attend either a three-hour or three-day workshop. The Practitioners Institute has worked with more than 70 groups across the United States, from Florida to California, and with delegations from 24 countries, from Indonesia to Romania.

In November 2009, HCZ and PolicyLink held the "Changing the Odds" conference on replicating the HCZ Project. For information on that conference, including copies of the materials presented, click here.

The Harlem Children's Zone owns the following trade names and federally registered trademarks and service marks ("Marks"): HARLEM CHILDREN'S ZONE®, CHILDREN'S ZONE®, HCZ®, THE BABY COLLEGE®, and HARLEM GEMS®. Use of these Marks without the express written permission of Harlem Children's Zone is prohibited.

HCZ does not license or endorse programs similar to those of Harlem Children's Zone in other communities as HCZ does not maintain oversight or bear responsibility for the quality of these programs developed by others. Nor do projects in other communities represent franchises of the HCZ model. HCZ is happy to assist other organizations, but it is always with the explicit understanding that these organizations are not affiliated or associated with HCZ, nor may they represent themselves as such. The content of this web site, including but not limited to, text, designs, and graphics is copyrighted under the copyright laws of the United States and is the property of the Harlem Children's Zone.

Download Application & Brochure

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Please note: Because the agency cannot meet all the requests that have come to us, we only offer workshops to groups who already have the resources necessary to initiate a large-scale comprehensive strategy, which is why groups must submit the application (above), to begin the process. We do not hold workshops for individuals.